Jefferey L Burgess

Jefferey L Burgess

Professor, Public Health
Adjunct Professor, Mining and Geological Engineering
Professor, BIO5 Institute
Member of the General Faculty
Member of the Graduate Faculty
Primary Department
Contact
(520) 626-4918

Research Interest

Jefferey L. Burgess, MD, MS, MPH is a Professor and Division Director of Community, Environment and Policy within the University of Arizona Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health. Dr. Burgess’ research focuses on improving occupational health and safety, with a special focus on firefighters, other public safety personnel and miners. Areas of current and past research include: reduction of occupational exposures, illnesses and injuries; respiratory toxicology; environmental arsenic exposure; and hazardous materials exposures including methamphetamine laboratories. In addition to multiple research grants, Dr. Burgess is the Principal Investigator (PI) for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-funded Mountain West Preparedness and Emergency Response Learning Center and a joint PI for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health-funded Western Mining Safety and Health Resource Center. Dr. Burgess is internationally recognized for his research evaluating the health effects of firefighting and methods for reducing firefighter exposures and other hazards, including but not limited to improved respiratory protection and injury prevention. He is also internationally known for his work on mining health and safety, and is a co-PI on a large Science Foundation Arizona grant supporting mining risk management, exposure assessment and control and economic analysis of health and safety systems. A separate ongoing grant is focused on comparing exposures and health effects associated with the use of diesel and biodiesel blend fuels in underground mining. He also has carried out multiple research projects on the adverse effects of low-level arsenic exposure in drinking water and more recently has begun to evaluate exposures from dietary arsenic sources.

Publications

Poplin, G. S., Pollack, K. M., Griffin, S., Day-Nash, V., Peate, W. F., Nied, E., Gulotta, J., & Burgess, J. L. (2015). Establishing a proactive safety and health risk management system in the fire service. BMC public health, 15, 407.

Formalized risk management (RM) is an internationally accepted process for reducing hazards in the workplace, with defined steps including hazard scoping, risk assessment, and implementation of controls, all within an iterative process. While required for all industry in the European Union and widely used elsewhere, the United States maintains a compliance-based regulatory structure, rather than one based on systematic, risk-based methodologies. Firefighting is a hazardous profession, with high injury, illness, and fatality rates compared with other occupations, and implementation of RM programs has the potential to greatly improve firefighter safety and health; however, no descriptions of RM implementation are in the peer-reviewed literature for the North American fire service.

Hysong, T. A., Burgess, J. L., Cebrián Garcia, M. E., & O'Rourke, M. K. (2003). House dust and inorganic urinary arsenic in two Arizona mining towns. Journal of Exposure Analysis and Environmental Epidemiology, 13(3), 211-218.
Burgess, J. L., Nanson, C. J., Hysong, T. A., Gerkin, R., Witten, M. L., & Lantz, R. C. (2002). Rapid decline in sputum IL-10 concentration following occupational smoke exposure. Inhalation Toxicology, 14(2), 133-140.
BIO5 Collaborators
Jefferey L Burgess, Clark Lantz
Burgess, J. L., Kovalchick, D. F., Harter, L., Kyes, K. B., & Thompson, J. N. (2000). Hazardous materials events: An industrial comparison. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 42(5), 546-553.
Andrew, A. S., Burgess, J. L., Meza, M. M., Demidenko, E., Waugh, M. G., Hamilton, J. W., & Karagas, M. R. (2006). Arsenic exposure is associated with decreased DNA repair in vitro and in individuals exposed to drinking water arsenic. Environmental Health Perspectives, 114(8), 1193-1198.